Tag: Eurogamer

#oneaday Day 522: Bravo Eurogamer

Just recently, Eurogamer published a review of Arc Raiders, the latest multiplayer craze, and ruffled more than a few feathers when the reviewer, Rick Lane, dinged the game with a 2/5 star rating, primarily due to the game's apparent use of generative AI to create many of its voice lines. The developer, Embark Studios, has form in this area, with its previous title, The Finals, also featuring AI-generated voice lines.

The reviewer's justification for giving the game such a low score was not simply "AI bad" — it was because, from an artistic perspective, getting a soulless robot to voice the human characters in your game that is about robots who have taken over the world and forced humanity underground feels just a little too incongruous to be able to pass without comment.

And I agree. I also firmly, strongly and resolutely believe that the use of generative AI in video game development is an obnoxious, odious, wasteful, exploitative and ethically reprehensible practice — and I have a firm policy that I will absolutely not engage with a game that appears to have been tainted with generative AI garbage. It's why I didn't play The Alters, it's why I haven't played the latest Everybody's Golf, and it's why I won't touch Arc Raiders. (In the latter case, it's also because I suspect I won't like Arc Raiders, but that's beside the point right now.)

I've been disappointed at quite how many people I've seen handwaving away this aspect of Arc Raiders in particular. Indeed, the Eurogamer review has a comments section that is at least as much of a trash fire as you would expect, because Video Game Good, and you're not allowed to take a firm ethical stance about something in a review because then the Gamers™, the good little consumer piggies that they are, will get mad that you said their Favourite Forever Game This Week was perhaps not to your taste for a perfectly valid reason.

The unfortunate thing with Arc Raiders is that its use of AI and machine learning (which are different things) is a bit shrouded in uncertainty right now. Some folks say that its generated voice lines are fine because it's actually just a fancy text-to-speech system; some folks are taking this argument further in order to weaponise disabled people and accessibility features; some are saying that it's fine because the actors the voices were trained on were aware of what they were signing up for.

But regardless of whether or not Arc Raiders' voices were generated by supposedly consenting voice actors, or if they were the product of the more environmentally disastrous end of generative AI, the entire thing rubs me the wrong way. The really stupid thing is that the generated voices in Arc Raiders are for things that voice actors could have very reasonably just recorded — things like vendors, NPCs and suchlike — and Embark's justification for using generated voices is that it's "quicker". On top of that, the results are markedly, obviously inferior to using an actual voice actor recording the complete lines, so one has to question if cutting corners in this way is really worth it.

Embark's not a small, frugal indie company, either. They have the resources to be able to afford voice actors to do a proper job. They're just refusing to. And regardless of the tech that produces the not-very-good end result, it sets a poor precedent to do that.

The arguments in favour of generated voices aren't very convincing, either. The most common one that comes up is that "one day we'll have games where every NPC conversation will be AI-generated, and you'll be able to talk to them about anything!" And to that I say: I absolutely do not want that.

When I'm playing a game that has characters in it, a narrative, a setting, all that stuff — I want to experience the vision of the creators. I want to enjoy something that someone else has created, with a clear vision and purpose behind it. I want to be able to reflect on the way a writer composed a piece of dialogue; how a character's mannerisms tell us more about them; how the tone of the whole piece gives a feeling of coherence to the game as a complete creative work.

If you're AI-generating your dialogue, you get none of that. You get a hodgepodge, incoherent mess that is easily exploitable — and, indeed, we've already seen that numerous times already, whether it's Darth Vader saying fuck or a character in the latest HoyoVerse game apparently having no idea who they are, what their background is, what their personality is or what is around them.

I refuse to accept the "genie is out of the bottle" argument. We've been making video games for 50+ years at this point, and the reason the medium has continued to endure is because of human creativity. We have seen incredible advancements in storytelling, mechanics and the overall craft of making all manner of different games over the years — and the AI glazers seem to want nothing more than to just throw all that experience away in favour of some "vibe coded" garbage with AI-generated dialogue and synthesised speech.

Couple that with the fact that AI is insanely wasteful, growing increasingly likely to make the worldwide economy crash, disastrous for the environment and taking valuable resources away from doing things that might actually make life better for people who really need it to be better? Nah. Don't need it. Don't want it. And will not support anything made with it, no matter how much you argue "no no no, but this is a good use of it, actually."

I say bravo to Rick Lane of Eurogamer for having the balls to stand up and say "no" to this garbage with a thoughtful and well-considered critique. If only we could see a bit more of that kind of thing, and less of this sort of rubbish.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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1367: Alpha

Eurogamer published the first of its "alpha and beta reviews" earlier on the subject of Peter Molyneux's possibly rubbish new God game Godus.

The posting of said review, coupled with the accompanying justification for it (including why it doesn't carry a score) immediately prompted the usual snark on Twitter. This made me gnash my teeth in frustration.

After the previous paragraph, it will probably not surprise you to learn that I'm actually in favour of Eurogamer doing what it's doing — and no, not just because I work for their sister site USgamer. No, I actually think this is an important thing, particularly given recent developments in the growing "early access" model of selling games — and the fact that some people apparently aren't aware of said developments.

You're probably already familiar with the basic "early access" programme — buy something, often for a cut-down price, and get immediate access to an early version of the game so you can 1) try it out before everyone else does and 2) provide some feedback that can actively help with development. It worked for Minecraft, it worked for Frozen Synapse and there's plenty of others out there it's worked for too.

Here's the strange new development, though: a number of free-to-play games have put themselves in Steam's Early Access catalogue. Nothing unusual, you might think, until you notice that they're actually charging for you to play this early version. In effect, you're paying to be part of a closed alpha/beta test for a game that won't cost any money to download when it's finished.

This is weird, no?

Okay, in most cases you're not just paying for access — in the case of Snow, you get some bonus items and in the case of Magicka: Wizard Wars' upper tiers, you get a full copy of Crusader Kings II for considerably less than its full retail price — but it still seems a little odd; I can't get away from the fact that you're "buying" a free-to-play game.

And this is why Eurogamer's idea of specifically reviewing commercially available alpha and beta versions is a sound one. It's something distinct from a hands-on preview — which is what most of the snark from earlier was comparing it to — because it discusses something that people can actually hand over money for right now, despite the fact it's not finished. A hands-on preview typically comes from something that not everyone has access to, be it a play with the game at a developer's office, a behind-closed-doors look at a trade show, or even a report on a demo from a consumer show such as Eurogamer Expo that not everyone would have had the opportunity to attend for whatever reasons; by contrast, an alpha/beta review lets people know whether or not it's worth spending their hard-earned money on something that may or may not cost a different amount of money when it's finished being developed — or indeed something that may be completely free when it's finished.

Being informed is important, particularly when it comes to making a decision about whether or not to spend money on something. I think we'll start to see more of this sort of thing in the near future, and it's going to be an important part of how we look at the development process of games in the coming years.

1257: You Ess Gee

I'm really happy with the way USgamer is going.

Lest you've somehow missed me going on about it, USgamer is my new job. It is the American counterpart to the well-established European gaming site Eurogamer, but it is absolutely not a reskinned Eurogamer. It is its own beast, and the small team we have working on it are carving out a great little niche.

In order for a new gaming site to make sense in this crowded content marketplace, it needs to offer something different and interesting. There are already far too many sites doing the "daily news, occasional previews and reviews" thing, and after a while they become all but interchangeable. That's not to say that there's anything inherently wrong with that model, but there are already a whole bunch of well-established sites out there that do that, and so jumping head-first into the fray and hoping to compete is, frankly, lunacy.

Instead, what we're doing with USgamer is a combination of original reporting and personal, opinionated editorial pieces. The news that has already been covered by other sites gets put into our front-page "feed", allowing us to acknowledge that things have happened but not waste any time on rewriting things that have already been written five or six times over — and will be rewritten several hundred more times by the time the day is over. This frees us up to write interesting features, interviews, reviews, previews and opinion pieces, with a strong focus on us writing in our own personal "voices" in order to provoke discussion. It's the kind of site I'd like to read if I weren't actively writing for it; in fact, I still read the stuff my colleagues write and comment on it, and we're building a very pleasant little community in the process.

This is the first time I've really been present at the birth of a website like this. I was around when my brother launched the now-defunct What They Play, but in a freelance capacity rather than as a regular staffer, so I didn't really get to see in detail how the community built up and responded to things. With USgamer, however, it's interesting to observe the new community members showing up, tentatively commenting, engaging in discussions and subsequently growing in confidence, becoming regular posters in the process.

It's early days yet — our most commented-on piece has about 30 comments or so, which is a fraction of what a fairly throwaway story on Eurogamer attracts on a daily basis — but we're setting a good groundwork. By having high-quality stuff on the site at this early stage and actively participating in discussions with the community, we're setting high expectations both for ourselves and our readers, and I really think that's going to pay off in the long term. We're never going to be a Kotaku, but we're not trying to be; Kotaku posts far too much stuff to keep up with in a single day anyway.

Basically, I'm having a blast with it so far, and I hope you like it too. On the off-chance you haven't taken a peek just yet, get thee hence, even if you're not an American. You might just like what you see.

1229: What's Next

May 31 -- SqueeThose of you who have me on some form of social media will know this already, but I've started my new job. Excitingly, this is the first ever new job I've had that was accompanied by an official press release. Yes, really — check it out.

For those of you too lazy to check out that link I've so graciously provided for you, allow me to explain as much as I'm able to at present.

You may be familiar with the video games website Eurogamer, home of some fine commentary on games, the games industry and all manner of other things. Eurogamer is one of the few European (specifically, British) sites that has risen to prominence amid the dominance of primarily American publications such as Gamespot, IGN, Kotaku and Polygon. However, one thing Eurogamer lacked — as you might expect from the name — is a presence in the US.

Enter USgamer, a new site set to launch into beta next week, and a site on which I'm officially acting as News Editor, but in practice will be contributing a whole lot of lovely stuff to on a regular basis. USgamer will be more than just a reskin of Eurogamer — it's going to be a great, very distinctive site, but you'll have to wait until next week to see exactly how and why it's great.

I've been preparing some content this week in preparation for the site's launch, and I've been surprised how refreshing it's been. After over a year of writing about mobile and social games — a good 80% of which were total bobbins — it's an absolute pleasure to be able to get my teeth back into writing about the industry as a whole, and specifically to explore, criticise and wax lyrical on the parts I'm truly passionate about.

It pains me a little to admit, but there were times when I was ashamed to be associated with the mobile and social side of things. There are too many companies out there peddling products that are just flat-out sleazy in the ways they attempt to coerce their audience into paying exorbitant amounts of money for "consumable" digital goods; in the way they shamelessly clone other people's work (or even, in some cases — *cough*Kabam*cough* — their own); or in their gross, misleading, often sexist or otherwise offensive advertising (Hai, Wartune!). I made a point of calling out these objectionable titles whenever possible, but I fear my criticisms may have fallen on deaf ears in most instances. So long as you keep pulling in the monthly and daily active users, it seems, it doesn't matter if you steal a bit of artwork here, outright lie about your game there, charge £70 for in-app purchases everywhere.

The mainstream games industry isn't free of sleaze and anti-consumer practices, of course, but at least it's easier to avoid, whereas it's fast becoming the norm in mobile and social, disappointingly. But I digress. My thoughts on social games and how they fail to cater to lifelong gamers have been well-documented.

No, the thing that is nicest about my new position at USgamer is the fact that I get to write about things I truly care about. I'm currently preparing a feature on the history of a particular game genre (find out what soon!), for example, and I'd forgotten quite how enjoyable it is to research and put together pieces like this. Gaming is a rich and diverse art form, and it's exciting to look back on how far things have come since the inception of the medium. It's also exciting to look forward to the future and imagine where we might be in a year or two — and it's also exciting to explore the sheer breadth of content that's available now. For every Call of Duty, there's an Ar Tonelico, a Fez, a Dungeons of Dredmor, a Long Live the Queen, a Deadly Premonition… there's certainly more to talk about than one person could ever manage in a lifetime, and new things happening all the time.

As you can probably tell, I'm very excited about this new position and about the site as a whole. I'm aware of the irony of me — an Englishman in, well, England — writing for a site called "USgamer", but I'm extremely happy to be working with the team that's in place, which includes some industry veterans as well as some old colleagues from my days on GamePro. It's going to be a fantastic site once it's up and running and available to the public, and I can't wait to show it to you when it goes live.

1011: Sigh... Another Shitstorm

Boy, it all kicked off earlier. Again.

For those who missed the whole shebang, basically, this is the flow of events over the last two days to the best of my knowledge.

Yesterday:

  • Twitter "debate" erupts over whether or not it was ethical for UK games journalists attending the annual "Games Media Awards" ceremony to be tweeting promotional hashtags in the hope of winning a PS3.
  • Winners of said competition name-checked by several Twitter users.
  • Several of said winners speak up and say they are giving away their PS3s.
  • Eurogamer publishes this article by Robert Florence (now recreated on GAF because the Eurogamer-hosted one has been edited) in which he notes that journalists defending such a competition could be seen as corrupt. He quotes tweets from several public sources (mostly Twitter) in said article.
  • MCV staff writer Lauren Wainwright, who was originally quoted in Florence's article, posts on Facebook "Yes, I've seen it. Yes, it's slander. No, it's not being taken lightly." and quickly makes it clear that she is referring to Florence's article.

Today:

Most of the salient points surrounding this issue have probably already been addressed far better than I will do in this post, but since this is my personal blog I thought I would give my take on the matter, as something of an "outsider" to the UK games industry. (It's true; despite living in the UK, pretty much all games/tech journalism work I've done in the last few years has been for American outlets — the last UK publication I wrote for was the UK Official Nintendo Magazine, and that was back when the N64 was one of the current-generation consoles.)

I have come to the conclusion, not just as a result of this shitstorm, that I am Not A Fan of the UK games journalism industry.

Actually, that's not quite true — there are plenty of people in the UK industry with a considerable degree of integrity who sadly toil away in relative obscurity. People like Lewis Denby over at Beefjack, Ashton Raze and Tom Hoggins over at The Telegraph's games column, and itinerant freelancer Chris Schilling — and scores of others, too, most of whom I follow on Twitter. These are all people that I may not have had the pleasure of actually meeting in most cases (though I met Denby at the Houses of Parliament one day) but whom I have interacted with and have grown to trust the opinions of. I have no issue with these people.

However, what I do have an issue with is the "old boys' club" that is at the core of the UK games journo industry; a toxic heart beating away and infecting all around it with its bitterness and vitriol. In this inner circle, most people seem to actively hate their job, mocking it at every opportunity and deriding genuinely interesting ventures such as a games journalism introductory session that IGN attempted to host in London a short while back. The apparent priority for a number of these individuals — from what I can tell from their public output, anyway — is getting drunk and taking the piss out of the medium they're supposed to be representing. "VIDEOGAMES," they'll say (and misspell), deriding something that everyone is already aware of and completely ignoring the more interesting things going on in the business.

The focal point of all this vitriol is surely the Games Media Awards, an odious annual event hosted by Intent Media, the parent company of Wainwright's employer MCV. Now, you might not think that celebrating the achievements of hardworking journalists is a bad thing, and for the record, I don't either — but for the last two years I have seen nothing but obnoxious behaviour surrounding this event. I don't know about you, but for a professional industry awards ceremony, I expect a certain level of professionalism, formality and decorum — none of which are readily apparent in the slightest when looking at the GMAs, which are little more than a pissup for journalists organised by PR staff and publishers.

I knew that something was up when the "humorous" Twitter account promoting the event last year was publicly lambasting anyone (including me) who took umbrage with its less-than-professional tone. These suspicions were only confirmed when the sponsors for the event showed up brandishing about a million free condoms and with an army of dwarfs in tow. The event was a complete debacle and many of the journos present did decry the sponsor Grainger Games' behaviour as abhorrent, to be fair — but equally, there were plenty of "oh man, I was so drunk" stories circulating.

This year, it was a different controversy — specifically, a whole lot of behaviour which Florence quite accurately pointed out could be interpreted as shilling. Journos were getting their photograph taken with the dude from Far Cry 3 and tweeting about some game I've never heard of called Defiance, and publicly sharing both on Twitter. Some people quite rightly criticised this, and that's what kicked off this whole debacle. Specifically, it was Intent Media and various other members of the "inner circle" defending their behaviour that kicked off this whole debacle.

You see, part of the problem with the "inner circle" is that it believes itself superior and immune to criticism. At no point were those who had been "caught in the act" willing to discuss the possibilities that their actions might be misinterpreted, whatever the actual intentions behind them. Wainwright's "complaint" and possible threat of legal action is just one of many silencing tactics that have been used surrounding this issue, with the others being the old favourite "remember when we just talked about games? Games were fun!" and "get back to work" arguments.

Well, yes, games are fun, and it would be nice to get back to talking about them. But these conversations that we're having here are important, too. This whole ridiculous situation came about for a reason, after all, and it's something that the industry should learn from. Specifically, outlets should begin getting their staff better acquainted with media law, and they should also instill in their employees a culture that criticism is not always a negative thing; sometimes it is an opportunity to grow, change and improve.

Will the industry actually learn from this, though? Probably not, sadly. I would, however, like to state for the record that I have never seen this level of ridiculously shameful behaviour from the American games press. Sure, there's been plenty of public spats — particularly surrounding high-profile figures such as Destructoid's Jim Sterling and the Polygon crew — but nothing that's actually left me feeling as ashamed of the industry I've worked so hard to be a part of as the last 48 hours have.

I'll leave you with this excellent piece by Jeff Grubb from back in the early days of Bitmob. I agree with everything my hirsute honey says. And that's the last I will say on the matter!

#oneaday Day 982: Must Try Harder

I'm not normally one to put down the hard work of others, particularly in my own field of writing, but I feel compelled to say a few words about some things that have been published this week.

Here's one.

Here's the other.

Now, lest I come across as some sort of joyless bastard, I am aware that both of these pieces were written in jest in an attempt to be — I assume, anyway — "satirical", but the fact is that they both utterly fail in what they are trying to do, leaving them both looking rather foolish — particularly the deranged scribblings of the Borderlands 2 piece.

There are several things that irk me about these two pieces. Firstly is the fact that they exist at all, and on high-profile, (arguably) respectable sites that actually pay their writers. It's hard to feel that this sort of thing is justifiable when there are plenty of people across the world writing purely for the love of writing about games. My team over at Games Are Evil is just one of many groups who don't write about games as their main, paying job but still put in a ton of effort to produce great content and strive to improve their own work over time. The scores of community writers over at Bitmob are another great example. The countless bloggers all over the world. Those who run enthusiast sites in their own time in an attempt to get noticed. All of those produce higher quality work than the two pieces linked above — and yet these are the articles that are deemed worthy of pay. There's no justice there.

The second thing that has vexed me somewhat regarding this matter is the amount of praise they have got — mostly from fellow professionals, it has to be said. The first piece in particular drew a frankly astonishing amount of fawning, with quotes including that it was the "most clever [review of Borderlands 2]" that one tweeter had ever read; that it was "anarchic stream-of-consciousness, like the game itself"; that it was the "most incredible piece of games journalism ever" and the "Ulysses of games journalism".

Now, I'm all for celebrating good writing. But this was not good writing. Even from the perspective of it presumably being some sort of parody (or "anarchic stream-of-consciousness") it just didn't work. The number of utterly bewildered comments beneath the article is proof of that — and it's the same for the Eurogamer piece.

The thing is, I know both writers are capable of much better — and I have nothing against either of them personally. The author of the Borderlands 2 piece is not only the editor of one of the biggest video game sites in the UK, but also a novelist. I expect considerably better from him, in short — or if he's going to try something clever, it should be something that actually works.

Since taking a step back from mainstream games journalism (my day job focuses on mobile and social games, and Games Are Evil focuses on the "alternative" side of computer and console gaming) I have regrettably confirmed a few suspicions I had about the state of the games journalism sector in the UK. A noticeable, vocal proportion of it is made up of a very insular "old boys' club" which appears to believe itself immune to criticism, meaning that it feels more and more liberties can be taken with what sort of work and attitude is acceptable — and anyone who steps out of line to say "hang on a minute…" gets summarily ridiculed. I found myself the recipient of such scorn last year when I pointed out my discomfort at the tone and content of the Games Media Awards Twitter feed, and consequently have shied away from publicly criticising things ever since. I was in two minds about posting this entry at all with that in mind, but in this instance I felt the need for a bit of cathartic release if nothing else.

There are plenty of fantastic games writers out there who don't need to resort to… whatever these two pieces were resorting to. Satire? Parody? Childishness? I honestly don't know, even after rereading them both several times.

Demand better from your articles about games. For all the pontificating about how games journalism is "broken" and how it should be "fixed", if these pieces are anything to go by it seems to be getting worse rather than better.